8 Ways Friends Cheat at Home Poker (and How Hosts Catch It)

Nobody cut the deck. He shuffled, he dealt, and he gave himself two aces. That's the stack deck and it's one of eight ways your friends cheat at home poker. Most of them are sloppy, two of them are real card moves, and the last one happens at almost every home game, usually without anyone meaning to. For each one, I'll show you how it works, what it looks like from across the table, and the one thing a host can do to shut it down, starting with the easiest. Number one, the extra stack. Everybody buys in for a hundred in chips. The host counts out the stacks and in the chaos of the first hand, one guy grabs his stack plus a few chips from the box. >> [music] >> Nobody counts again. He's playing with a hundred and twenty and he only paid for a hundred. The tell is a stack that's taller than everybody else's before a single pot has been played. The fix is simple. Count every stack out loud as you hand it over and keep the chip box closed and next to you, not in the middle of the table. Number two, chips that leave the table. Late in the night, someone slides a couple of big chips off the edge of the table and into his pocket. At the end, he cashes out a normal looking stack and the chips in his pocket come back next week. You can't watch every hand, >> [music] >> but you can do the math. If the table bought in for two thousand in chips, there should be two thousand in chips at the end. If there's nineteen fifty, somebody's pocket has the other fifty. And it works the other way, too. If somebody brings chips from home that match your set, the count comes out high. Those two are about chips. The next four are about the cards and the last two of those take real practice. Number three, the neighbor peek. When you lift your cards up to look at them, the guy next to you can see them, too. Some people see them by accident. Some lean back in their chair every single hand. Either way, he knows exactly what you have. The fix is how you look at your cards. Leave them flat on the table, cover them with one hand, and lift just the corners. And if someone keeps leaning over, say something. It's your table. Number four, marked cards. It doesn't take a special deck. A fingernail bend in the corner of every ace, a tiny scratch on the back of the Kings, a smudge of grease on the Queens. After an hour he knows where the big cards are just by looking at the backs. Open a new deck every game night and keep two decks with different colored backs. While one deck is being dealt, the other one gets shuffled. If cards start to bend or get dirty, retire the deck. Number five, the stacked deck. While he picks up the cards from the last hand, he sets two aces right where he wants them near the top of the deck. Then he shuffles, except it only looks like a shuffle. The top few cards never move. He deals and the aces land exactly where he planned. The fix is one rule. The player on the dealer's right cuts the deck every hand, no exceptions. One clean cut moves the top cards to the middle and ruins anything he set up. Number six, the bottom deal. It takes hours of practice, which is why it's rare. He keeps a good card on the bottom of the deck, deals everyone else from the top, and deals himself from the bottom. At full speed you won't see it. You don't have to catch it. Put a cut card on the bottom of the deck. That's a plain plastic card, so the bottom card is always blank and there's nothing worth dealing from down there. And move the deal every hand, so nobody controls the deck for long. Now the last two, and neither one takes any skill at all. One takes two people and the last one happens at almost every home game. Number seven, the partners. >> [music] >> Two friends who show up together and quietly play as a team. They never raise each other. When one of them has a big hand, the other raises to build the pot. If you're sitting between them, you get squeezed from both sides. And a signal as simple as where one of them sets his chips can tell the other what he has. Watch who never plays against whom. Seat them apart at opposite ends of the table and make it a house rule. If you're in a hand together, you play it like it's anybody else. And number eight, the forgotten rebuy. Three hours in, somebody runs out of chips, grabs another stack, and says he'll settle up at the end. At the end, he's sure he already paid. Or he remembers rebuying twice, not three times. Most of the time nobody's lying. Nobody wrote it down. But the numbers don't add up and somebody covers the difference, usually the host. Here's the good news. You don't have to catch anyone. You just have to make cheating not worth it. A new deck, a cut every hand, a cut card on the bottom, the deal moving every hand, and partners sitting apart. Then at the end of the night, count the chips against every buy-in. If the table doesn't balance, you know something's off before anybody gets paid. That last part is why I built Home Game Poker. It logs every buy-in and re-buy, and when you count the chips at the end, it tells you whether the table balances or something's missing. It doesn't take bets, hold money, or move money. It just keeps score. Download HD Poker on the App Store or Google Play. So, which one have you actually seen at your table? Tell me in the comments. And if your group is still learning, here's how to play poker from the very first card.